Tedious narcissist blowhard Jake Paul will fight Mike Tyson on Saturday in a meaningless freakshow in Texas that will likely – thanks to the fact it is being internationally streamed by Netflix – be the most watched boxing match in history. Naturally, both men will make millions.
That the contest has little to do with sport but rather is being summoned into existence as ‘content’, the term now used for anything (dwarf tossing, unboxing videos, weird mukbang eating shows) that can be streamed digitally for the purpose of attracting eyeballs and selling advertising or subscriptions, is a point so obvious it hardly needs stating. Sadly, it makes it no less depressing. A grift is a grift, after all.
The age difference between the two fighters is for a start a grotesque insult to boxing. Paul is 27, Tyson a 58 year-old grandfather. But what really grates for fans of the sport is the manner in which its most famous living luminary is able in this way to be bought and sold – and potentially terribly humiliated – by an upstart who in a just world would not be fit to lace Iron Mike’s gloves.
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